David McElroy

I was about 14 years old when I figured out how to bug my family’s home telephone.

Although it was a touchtone phone instead of rotary dial by then, it looked a lot like this one. It was mounted on a wall in a hallway in the middle of the house. I had been tinkering for years with wires, batteries, phone parts and tape recorders. I understood the basics of the technology.

The cable containing four wires ran down the wall and through the floor to an unfinished basement. It was there that I conducted my experiment. I figured out how to trigger the power to a tape recorder when the phone rang. I had spliced the two wires carrying voices into a line-in cable to the recorder.

Every time the phone started ringing, the recorder started — with the record buttons already in position — and it recorded the conversation. I don’t recall how I rigged it to know when a call was over.

For a long time, I’ve told this story with amusement, but it wasn’t until the last few years that I understood what it was all about. The real insight in this story is that I didn’t trust anybody — and I thought nothing of betraying their trust, too.

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I don’t think I made much of an impression on her when we first met. But she made a big impression on me, so I did something I had never done before. I chased her.

We met online. It’s been many years now. She was smart, had beauty-queen looks and seemed to share a lot of my values. It was like spotting a unicorn in the wild, but I felt as though I was way out of my league to pursue this ideal woman.

For a couple of months, we corresponded a bit online. A few of our conversations were deep and intense, but it didn’t seem that important to her. All I knew is that I wanted to get to know her better. I liked what I saw, but I sensed hidden depths that she wasn’t letting me see.

I was pretty sure I would fall in love with this woman if I ever saw her heart.

But she was busy. She was also in demand. I’m sure she was being pursued by other men. I didn’t get to see her heart. Then I didn’t hear from her for awhile. I’ve never been the sort who chased a woman who didn’t seem interested in me, but I couldn’t let this one go.

I set my ego aside and I chased her.

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Lori was laughing as she told me something her puppy had done. We were both on our way home after work Thursday afternoon. When I first called her, she was grumpy about the lousy week she’s had, but that changed after a few minutes. She was laughing and happy.

She suddenly sounded mildly annoyed and said she needed to take a phone call from her mother. Her mom had called five times since we had started talking, and that wasn’t like her.

About 20 minutes later, she texted me. She was in a daze. Her mother had been calling to say that her father has brain tumors.

When I called her back, she wasn’t the same happy young woman she had been. Her entire life had just been turned upside down. She still doesn’t know the details, but she’s leaving town first thing Friday morning to drive home — to deal with an uncertain future for the father she loves dearly.

And I’m sitting here thinking — again — just how uncertain our short lives really are.

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